Why not do a fresh install of 8.0

[mooncaptain66]

I am running a standalone esxi 6.7 - no vcenter.

The system has an SSD for the OS and an onboard RAID controller for the VM's

Trying to upgrade from 6.7 to 8.0 I got this error.

The message is about the lsi/avago/broadcom raid controller I have - model 9361-8i.

I attempted to upgrade the driver on my 6.7 esxi but it is complicated by a dependency.

The new / latest vib is compatible with 8.0

If I were doing a fresh install on the hardware that I now have - barring other complications - the supermicro MB and xeon processor and the raid controller are all compatible. The installer would just grab the latest vib for the 9361-8i

Question - if I do a fresh install does the esxi scan the Raid for all the VM's? I would have to set up my connection to the domain and reconfigure several things that I don't remember but I would have 8.0.

How many assumptions did I get wrong?

Really would like some input on this.

btw this is the dependency error.

VIB BCM_bootbank_lsi-mr3_7.726.02.00-1OEM.700.1.0.15843807 requires vmkapi_2_6_0_0, but the requirement cannot be satisfied within the ImageProfile

When I looked this up the problem is the the vmkapi is used my other stuff and upgrading it could break other stuff. Hence the desire to do a fresh install.

[mooncaptain66 · Accepted solution]

I tried to finesse this problem by using update manage/life cycle mgt/the new thing that it called. I had to install vcenter 8 to try this. I Did not have much luck. In the end I removed vcenter. shut down the host. replaced the OS drive with a blank and I did a straight install of  version 8 with no problem. Of course at that point I had to reconstruct my network - not a big deal - about an hour of fooling around and ran into a problem assigning a port  group to the wrong thing. - should be standard port group not vmkernel.

My world is pretty simple 1 host < 20 vms most of the time. 2 hard wired networks. So rebuilding from scratch is not a problem